Porn Icon Jesse Jane Found Dead of Apparent Overdose in Oklahoma
The actress, 43, starred in a high-budget porn series before selling her own brand of sex toys and then raising her family in the quiet Midwest.
Gabe Ginsberg/Getty Images
Former adult film actress Jesse Jane was found dead in Moore, Oklahoma on Wednesday morning. Local police officers responding to a wellness check found the porn star, 43, and her boyfriend both dead of apparent drug overdoses at a house where they were staying together.
Jane, who was born Cynthia Howell in Fort Worth, Texas, grew up shuffling between military bases with her family and waiting tables at Hooters before rising to prominence by starring in TV commercials and modeling on the beauty pageant circuit.
In 2003, she made the jump into an adult film career, which she is most known for, signing with the porn studio Digital Playground. Jane starred in the Playground-produced Pirates films, which had combined multimillion-dollar budgets—astronomical allowances in the generally small-budget world of porn.
Jane’s media career led her beyond adult film as well, with appearances alongside David Hasselhoff and Pamela Anderson in Baywatch: Hawaiian Vacation and in the HBO show Entourage.
She also introduced her own brand of sex toys after retiring from porn altogether in 2007. “You always have to have a back-up plan,” she told CNBC in 2009, “because the truth is you can’t do this business forever.”
Jane raised a family in Oklahoma after ending her porn career, and reflected on her legendary status and the way the industry has changed with GQ in 2018.
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“Don’t get me wrong—I still love porn—but the internet is slowly killing the industry, making it all about shock,” she told the magazine. “I’m just not about what objects I can shove inside me, or how many dicks I can fit in my ass at the same time.”
If Jane’s lifelong ability to switch roles and positions—from actress to entrepreneur to model to mother—is any indication, she was more than that, indeed.
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